Hello! As you may have guessed from the name of this blog, my name is Liz and I am fascinated by song lyrics. I hope you enjoy my waxing lyrical about lyrics and about music generally. I also review albums and gigs and have interviewed several wonderful musicians. Enjoy!

Sunday, 16 June 2013

Beaches and broken hearts

Dear readers,

I hope you are all well. I have finished all of my university exams so now I can relax for the summer - although I am still busy with writing and poetry. One of my poems - a poem about music, actually - is going to be published in an online magazine soon! So I am very happy about that.

I was recently listening to Wind Beneath My Wings by Bette Midler and remembering how much I love the film Beaches - I really must watch it again soon.

I also never knew the girl who played Bette Midler's character at eleven in the film is now Sheldon's girlfriend (or sort-of girlfriend or whatever; I don't watch it so don't know the ins and outs of it) in the Big Bang Theory.

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Recently I heard this song in the car, on the radio, and remembered how much I like it: I'll Stand by You by the Pretenders.

When I was younger I heard the Girls Aloud version a lot and discovered far too late that there was a brilliant 90s song behind the awful over-the-topness GA made it into. When I found the original I was amazed by Chrissie Hynde's sumptuous vocals. This is one song I would love to be able to sing really well.

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You know when you keep hearing a song and you don't know what it is, and you'd love to hear it again? Well, once on a car journey I heard a song on the radio that I accepted was clichéd but which I really liked, and all I could remember was a lyric about open arms.

I then heard it again very recently in a café and listened as hard as I could to try to hold onto something I could look up and hopefully find the song. This time I caught enough lyrics to find it, and it turned out to be... drumroll... Where Do Broken Hearts Go by Whitney Houston.

I was surprised, I had expected it to be from before her time. I am also not generally a big Houston fan; however I do really like this song.

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I have been watching bits and pieces of The Voice UK and my favourites out of the four finalists have to be Matt and Mike, with Mike being my winner (though I don't think he will actually win, sadly. Ah well, I can hope).

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I've been learning Cantonese for a month or so (I already speak some Mandarin) and I wanted to share this song by Faye Wong: versions exist in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Here is the Cantonese one.

I would recommend learning a Chinese dialect to anybody: there is so much fascinating culture attached to the language and idioms.

In addition, I imagine learning a language made of characters instead of letters (assuming your first language is one that has letters) probably improves lateral thinking too. I feel that it's had that affect on me, anyway.

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I think that's it for now; thanks again to all my wonderful Uni friends for a great first year; thanks as well to all my non-Uni friends for some amazing times together.

Just after starting Uni I shared this song and described how it captured my feelings about the new friendships I was making; it still does now.

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About Me

Hi! I'm Liz.
I'm a fourth-year student of French and Spanish at the University of Manchester. I spent a year teaching English in France and studying in Spain. I've also studied in China.
I am Fiction Editor at Miracle Magazine and I write for The Mancunion, Cuckoo Review, The Cadaverine and Third Year Abroad. I love languages, music, photography, film making, stargazing and cats.